Monday, February 20, 2017

Anticipating upcoming Sci Fi Movies of 2017

1. Underworld: Blood Wars: Kate Beckinsale is very watchable and there are moments of irony in the Underworld series, and action. But it betrays the essence of the lycanthrope - wolfman - mythos, making them just smellier vampires. If vampires are the aristocratic monsters, and zombies the proletarians, then wolfmen have always been the bourgeoise, middle class monsters! With a mortgage to pay, a lawn to mow, kids who don’t understand him, and now the full moon is approaching and “I don’t have time for this!” Hence, I bear a grudge. Feh, but very watchable.

2. Death Race 2050: Geez, a cliché take on the cliché ripoffs of a cliché.3. “The Discoverymovie will follow a love story set one year after the existence of an afterlife is scientifically verified.” Oh, so now you listen to science? Sounds like Robert Sheckley’s classic Immortality Incorporated. (Get it.) Otherwise, it sounds interesting.

4. The Space Between Us- already bombing in theaters - follows a youth “raised by scientists on Mars who returns to Earth to find his father, falling in love with a street smart girl.” 90% of you know which Heinlein classic this steals from.

5. Life: Astronauts find life on Mars that tries to eat them. I suppose an eightieth interpretation of this hoary cliché might click.

7. The Circle is based on the international best-seller by Dave Eggers. Eggers’ use of reverse-voice propaganda is almost as skillfully effective as Orson Scott Card at getting you to despise average citizens and hate the only thing that ever gave us privacy in the first place, or kept us free. So sure. Just watch the method of this propaganda, having the villains self-righteously rant and rant and rant and rant how virtuous they are. Once you notice the technique, it will never work as well on you, again.

9. Transformers, directed by Michael Bay. The most vivid way to go deaf. The aliens who are stealing our media without paying a dime in royalties probably love this stuff and as long as we produce it, there’ll be no first contact. There’s your Fermi Paradox explanation. ETs are all 12 year old boys.

10. I don’t know why I did not want to like this series, but its sheer intelligence won me over. War for the Planet of the Apes, continues a version of this fable, this time meant for people with some thoughtfulness. Oh, but expect this round to be way overly-preachy.

13. Iron Sky: The Coming Race.A follow up to Iron Sky, in which Nazis plot world dominance from their base on the moon. I’ll wait for the DVD. Then lock the doors, pull the blinds and wear a paper bag over my head so no one will ever be able to confirm I sat there, munching popcorn and laughing my ass off.

14. Blade Runner 2049, directed by Denis Villeneuve, starring Harrison Ford, Ryan Gosling and Robin Wright. They listed this down at 14? Seriously. You had me at “Bla-”

18. Star Wars: Episode VIII The Last Jedi: Disney’s takeover of the Star Wars series meant that the films no longer relentlessly preach evil messages in almost every scene. That plus enabled me to sit, zone out, soft-reboot at very low IQ, and thus enjoy the vividness of Episode VII: The Force Awakens. I expect more the same from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Little ships diving to blow up hapless big ships - or really big ships… or really, really, OMG you won’t believe how big ships! This is not what I happily expected after first seeing the magnificent Empire Strikes Back, back when I thought we’d be gifted art, fun, beauty, wisdom and more fun, all at the same time, in an epic truly worthy of our time. Instead we got years of outright propaganda for evil -- described in Star Wars on Trial -- followed by a recent return to harmless bubblegum. Sure, bubblegum is far better than evil. One learns to take one one can get.

19. The Six Billion Dollar Man. Yep, inflation. There may be fun. Indeed, the number of remakes on this list is lower than expected.

21. The Blob. What was I just saying about reboots? I shouldn’t scribble these lists in real time.

22. Come on. Nowadays, movies should be counter-cyclical. And with real apocalypse looming…shouldn't we get a respite on screen? The Last Broken Darknessis a post-apocalyptic sci-fi film that follows the story of Sam, one of the last surviving human beings left on Earth who teams up with a small community of survivors who are suddenly faced with a new impending danger threatening to wipe out mankind’s existence forever. Zzzzzzzzzz.

23…. okay I am outta steam… I cannot slog to 31. There look to be some good things. Still. Come on. We can do way better.

When I see what Hollywood thinks is a great science fiction story mostly I think all their taste is in their mouth. Looking forwards to Bladerunner 2049 and Valerian and the city of a thousand planets though. Safe to assume you've made the studios aware of how much fun could be had with the uplift stories?

The previews make Ghost in the Shell look like it has been stripped of its Japanese story about emergent AI and turned into a bog standard American action movie wherein the protagonist is alone against the world and a secret conspiracy is set against them.

Is that Iron Sky the one involving a Sarah Palin look-alike sneaking off down to the Hollow Earth to report to Adolph on a dinosaur? Maybe there's a Westworld tie-in there?You have a paper bag over your head, crunching popcorn. You did not hear this from me. I wasn't here.

Groot & co., as mentioned. Thor III is due out at the end of year. (*still* hasn't seen Guardians, or Thor II: DVD price remains ridiculous!)

BBC are producing a TV series of Pullman's "His Dark Materials". No idea when that's out. (Pullman has finally announced the first volume of "The Book of Dust" is out in October.)

If the past few years are any indication, there may be a pretty solid hard SF tale that slips in under the radar around October.

Somebody really should scatter some Poul Anderson novels around Hollywood waiting rooms. There's plenty of actors who could play Dominic Flandry, but what about Nicolas Van Rijn? DiCaprio? Depp?

@Tony Fisk: re your last comment - I have been wondering this for YEARS. SO many years, that I once thought Harrison Ford would have made a good young Flandry, and James Robertson Justice an excellent Nicolas van Rijn.

Now, of course, it'd have to be Chris Pike and Brian Blessed. And how about David Falkayn? Ryan Gosling?? And some good CGI for "acid-tongued little cat-monkey Chee, and hulking alligator-faced centauroid Buddhist Adzel", and a film of Satan's World? I'd buy into that, as enthusiastically as I still do for the Star Wars series.

Tim, I'd also love to see some well done uplift movies. I think the technology is now plenty good enough to do justice to Startide Rising and The Uplift War. If they were well done they could be epic for the science fiction movie genre.

Larry Niven had an idea in "A World Out of Time", a ludicrously large fusion drive in a gas giant, in that novel, stuck in Uranus.... A passing gas giant would draw a smaller body into a different orbit, I hope this wasn't too PUNishing ;-)

...wolfmen have always been the bourgeoise, middle class monsters! With a mortgage to pay, a lawn to mow, kids who don’t understand him, and now the full moon is approaching and “I don’t have time for this!”

So when are you going to write that werewolf story, just to show them how it's done? (Or have you already done so and I missed it?)

(That's the problem with being a writer--if you say it can be done better, you've already shown the ability to do it yourself.) :)

Re: Guardians. I've been torn about that movie. I took my son to see it at the drive-in theater out in Santee (remember drive-ins?), and we had a great time. But every time it comes on TV now, it's "meh." So I'm wondering if I should look forward to some mindless fun or "just another comic book movie."

Although Baby Groot doesn't sound like much fun. (Goodness, what would changing his diaper be like?) :)

A. F. Rey:Re: Guardians. I've been torn about that movie. I took my son to see it at the drive-in theater out in Santee (remember drive-ins?), and we had a great time. But every time it comes on TV now, it's "meh." So I'm wondering if I should look forward to some mindless fun or "just another comic book movie."

I finally saw the first "Guardians" movie because people kept talking about what a great comic book movie it was, even for people who don't necessarily like comic book movies.

It didn't suck, but I didn't see what any fuss was about. To me, it was just a generic "several heroes get together and complete a mission" movie. I didn't even feel as if any of the good characters were particularly motivated. They just did what the plot demanded that heroic characters do in particular situations. The fact that Groot says "I am Groot" all the time isn't as funny as they think it is.

One problem I have is complete unfamiliarity with this incarnation of the "Guardians of the Galaxy" name in comics. The Marvel team I'm familiar with by that same name from the 1960s and 1970s is a completely different group. I know Starlord and Gamora, but not as part of any team.

You know what would be the perfect plot twist for the upcoming Ghost in the Shell movie ? That the film and trailers lulls you into thinking there's some dark secret behind the heroine's past only to find out there isn't. It's just worrying combined with memory loss from the obviously traumatic circumstances that cost her original body. Now that would be truly original.

I've found lately that many movie trailers leave you feeling as if you've seen the entire movie, including any surprises. Rather than leaving me hungry for more, many trailers leave me feeling as if I'm finished, and that sitting through the entire movie (again) would be anticlimactic.

Perhaps a new synthesis of an art form will materialize from all this--trailers deliberately designed to make you think you're seeing spoilers and such, but the real movie goes in enough of a different direction as to still be worth watching.

Over time, if that catches on, then moviegoers will be able to watch trailers again without the expectation that they've already seen the important parts of the movie.

One reviewer I read frequently says, and I agree, that a film hasn't completely failed if it's at least attempted to say something about the times it was made in. Well, the films of this year were made last year. I wonder what they'll try to say, if they try to say anything at all?

Alfred, I'm mulling Dr. Brin's comment about the movie: "Eggers’ use of reverse-voice propaganda is almost as skillfully effective as Orson Scott Card at getting you to despise average citizens and hate the only thing that ever gave us privacy in the first place, or kept us free."

I was looking for articles and "reverse-speech" shows up but referring to what I always called backward masking (in music etc.). I think I'm going to read the book.

Oh, I think Leo has been coming along nicely since his stint as Jack. (Remember, we're looking for The Man Who Counts, not the Baron!)

re: adding energy to Earth's orbit: another idea is a conducting space elevator on the far side of the Moon pulling against the Solar magnetic field. When you've got 'em by the Lunes, their lands and tides soon follow.

So when are you going to write that werewolf story, just to show them how it's done? (Or have you already done so and I missed it?)

David did this (as a Star Trek skit!) in a series that ran in Baen's Universe. Don't know if it was released elsewhere.

My take would be set in a post-apocalyptic world of eco-collapse, where the last vampires on Earth survive in a fortified Carpathian enclave, waiting for daybreak and the onslaught of hordes of the vengeful, deathly living. (Werewolves? Sigh! OK you guys can be the PR remnants... er, daytime security detail. No snacking on the sleeping residents!)

@Larry: I was using that approach for an imagined trailer for Earth (played out in the Theatre of the Mind) Data overload showing the Net in action (how to do this coherently?). The world of the future teetering on the brink of the Abyss, even without the Beast within. Brief crosscuts of grazer warfare. Daisy's death angels start the Harvest. Having set up the impression of a world going down in spectacular style, the final scene shows a fragile Earth spinning off into the opening maw of a waiting dragon. Very last shot has something tawny coming in from the side to deflect dragon with a body slam, with no prior hint as to what it is. (sounds abstract, but I know exactly where it goes)

@Bri: Okay. I think I found a definition for what he was referring to in the post.

Reverse Propaganda: A technique where one replaces propaganda material with content meant to make it appear trite, kitschy, or harmless. The idea is to leave the consumer thinking they can't be taken in my the material for that is when they can be taken in by the reverse message.

I see another definition that involves people pretending to be their opponent and then portraying them in a negative manner. On the surface it looks like positive propaganda, but our cognitive dissonance forces us to deal with the underlying negative message.

Bri:I'm mulling Dr. Brin's comment about the movie: "Eggers’ use of reverse-voice propaganda is almost as skillfully effective as Orson Scott Card at getting you to despise average citizens and hate the only thing that ever gave us privacy in the first place, or kept us free."

I was looking for articles and "reverse-speech" shows up but referring to what I always called backward masking (in music etc.). I think I'm going to read the book.

Dr Brin talked about that in an earlier post. I believe he's referring to a technique of having the side that he wants to propagandize against make the long, philosophical, Ayn Rand-eque manifestos, so that the reader is subconsciously turned off to that side.

I heard Fuzzy Planet is on the horizon. Also I'll put in a vote for Earth and Existence being married together in a film to blend action and alien visitation... surely would rival The Arrival. And on that note what about Scott Sigler's infected... that could be make for delicious canibalistic eye candy!

From the Wikipedia article on "Straw man:""(N)ut picking, a neologism coined by Kevin Drum.[17] A combination of "nut" (i.e., insane person) and "cherry picking", nut picking refers to intentionally seeking out extremely fringe, non-representative statements and/or individuals from members of an opposing group and parading these as evidence of that entire group's incompetence or irrationality."

Writers' use of unreliable narrators is an old trick for reverse propaganda as well.It took me a long time to figure out The Caine Mutiny, for example. I'm still working on A Prayer for Owen Meany, and I read that some 15 years ago.

I like King, too, but the Dark Tower dragged on, and became self-referential in an icky-cute way that reminded me of a declining late Heinlein. There are times when cross-universe references to author's other works (and King has done it well in other stories) but it fails dismally here. I'll wait for the DVD as well. Matthew McConaughey is a fine actor, but not noted for enlivening movies that plod. Valerian! Yes, yes, yes! For those not familiar with Besson, the trailor for Valerian should pique your interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BszXhUjJz00

Do other readers associate King with science-fiction? I think of his genre as horror more than anything else, and to the extent that many (not all) of his horror elements have supernatural explanations, more aligned with fantasy than with sci-fi.

I understand that something like his more-recent novel "11/22/63" about preventing the Kennedy assassination can be considered speculative fiction, which commonly falls under the umbrella of sci-fi. But there's a difference between "If history were different, the culture and politics of America would change in these ways..." vs "If history were different, the earth would look like a vision of hell." I was rapt with attention through the book, but disappointed that a promising sci-fi premise became another horror novel. Shoulda known better, I guess, after reading "The Stand", which was an awesome journey to a "meh" destination.

Perhaps it is an indication that I am rather juvenile, but I really enjoyed Guardians Of The Galaxy. I was never a comic book reader and have no prior familiarity with any of the recent era super hero characters. Well, I knew of Captain America but don't think I've ever read a CA comic. The only comic books I recall reading a bit of were Turok Son Of Stone.

Back to the movies, I have enjoyed most of the Marvel movies about the Avenger characters as fun action movies, and GotG is easily my favorite. I'm looking forward to the 2nd one. I hope they don't blow it.

An upcoming movie I am, with fingers crossed, looking forward to is a new Dune directed by Denis Villeneuve. Of course, it is early days yet and may not actually come to pass. The movie and TV series made to date have all sucked in my opinion. But I am hopeful that this one might be pretty good because I think Villeneuve did an excellent job with Arrival. I'll know more once I see the new Blade Runner.

No, I don't associate King with sci-fi. But horror is very odd, even for genre fiction. The Venn diagram for horror ends up intersecting fantasy (the supernatural is nearly always fantasy of one sort or another), mystery, sci-fi, and the odd thriller (human psychology being about as horrific as it gets).

At least that's how I see it.

And some depressing news today. The local utility is considering selling their fiber business. It's a very bad idea. Noteworthy is that the company wishing to buy it wasn't interested at all in actually developing the fiber in the first place.

Larry Hart asked "Do other readers associate King with science-fiction?"

No, I don't consider him to be science fiction. You could lump him, along with all horror and fantasy writers, under "speculative fiction" since his work involves world-building and the reactions of people to elements not found in our present society, but the scientific and technological aspects of his worlds are rather thin on the ground.

I don't consider Neil Gaiman, George RR Martin or Ashley Cope to be science fiction writers, either. Nonetheless, all have produced brilliant work.

Then you have the Foglios and Brin, who (sometimes) cheerfully mix the two genres together with no evident loss of quality.

Off topic, but exciting news for this blog: Seven terrestrial planets found orbiting red dwarf. All seven may be in inhabitable zone.https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/feb/22/thrilling-discovery-of-seven-earth-sized-planets-discovered-orbiting-trappist-1-star

First thought: Gee, that reminds me of the solar system in "Serenity" where all the planets were close, and habitable.

The NASA press release says that 3 of the planets are "firmly located in the habitable zone."

Definitely close together. All 7 planets are closer to their star, TRAPPIST-1 (an ultra-cool dwarf), than Mercury is to Sol. If we had evolved in such a system, and all other things being equal, we would likely be interplanetary by now.

L-Class star, so fairly low emissions. Still have cosmic radiation to deal with but of course there could be life forms that regard cosmic rays as a good source of nutrition. Probably pretty stable. And all seven planets (and surface gravity looks to range from about .25 to about .75) are well within Venus' orbit. The article speculates that the planets would all be tidally locked, but given the youth of the system (less than a half a billion years) and unknown eccentricity in the orbits, that ain't necessarily so.

(Cringe while imagining the cynical studio response: 'Yeah, but I like my dolphin sushi...nobody likes dolphins these days except the unicorn crowd and they only watch narrow releases...but maybe if they were sharks instead of dolphins...")

Though there is one movie I can see them doing. In this flick Indonesian authorities raid a house on Flores Island where Sumatran orangutans are reported being held as pets, only to find that what they have are living hobbits. The hobbits are impounded, and then Indonesia goes through the hassle of getting anybody outside the country to show any interest in the animals, especially the Americans.

I learned to be cautious about identifying authors with genres after Bradbury told us at a luncheon that only one of his stories qualified as science fiction. He took the time to educate us and was very nice about it too.

V Vinge's novels with the zones of thought theme are obviously space opera and he said as much. After reading the one with spiders, though, I saw how horror can overlap other genre's. Some of Octavia Butler's material left me felling the same way. Creepy stories stick. Ugh. 8)

Guy says: "Based on a bolometric luminosity of 0.000525 Suns for Trappist-1, only planets "d" and "e" are clearly in the conventional habitable zone, planets "c" and "f" would be marginal, and the others either too hot or too cold by conventional habital zone criteria. But, if planets f, g, and h are tide-locked, their substeller points might be warm enough for liquid water with the rest of the planet frozen. Despite its terrestrial mass, planet "b" seems to have an extensive envelope--perhaps Venusian in character and with 4.3 times terrestrial insolation at wavelenths that are more effective at heating than the Sun's, it is not a good prospect for liquid water. These new numbers make planet "c" somewhat denser than Earth, but the others are significantly less dense. There is other evidence of an envelope around planet c (hydrogen spectroscop y)."

Doctor Brin quoted: "Based on a bolometric luminosity of 0.000525 Suns for Trappist-1...'Would that even cast shadows discernible to the human eye on planets "d" and "e"? I hadn't realized it was that dim. Is it actually sustaining fusion of any kind?

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is a scientist, futurist and best-selling author. His novels include Earth, Existence, The Postman, and Kiln People, as well as Hugo Award winners Startide Rising and The Uplift War. The Transparent Society won a Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Assn.